“Of course,” Marcus said.
Passion, finally lucid, was protesting weakly that she was fine; she didn’t need to go to the nurse’s station, but the nurse wasn’t taking no for an answer. She guided Passion firmly out the door. Did Passion’s parents know she was a cutter? They must. They were the ones who’d written her the note so she wouldn’t have to change for gym. But how could they know and not get her help?
“Olivia?” Mr. G said.
I looked up to find Mr. G and Marcus both staring at me.
“Yeah, of course,” I said. “I won’t say anything.”
“Good,” Mr. G nodded, looking at us pointedly one last time. “You’ll need passes to your next class,” he said, heading down the aisle toward his desk.
“You’re in shock,” Marcus said, his voice low. “Just hold it together long enough for us to get out of here.”
I barely heard him, barely noticed him move away from me. Mr. G had stopped at my desk and was looking down at something.
“Olivia, is this your test?” he asked, pointing.
“Uh, yep, it is,” I said, moving numbly toward him, trying to act normal, be normal.
Mr. G scooped up my test paper and added to the pile on his desk. Then he began digging in a drawer for his pass slips.
Marcus was gathering up his things.
I walked to my desk, picked up my backpack, and put it over my shoulder. My arms were doing what arms do. My legs were moving my body around. My eyes were seeing things. But it didn’t feel like it was me doing any of it.
Marcus was already at Mr. G’s desk getting his pass. He took it and headed out the door, not even giving me a backward glance.
Maybe I’d imagined what he’d said. About me being in shock. About us getting out together. No, holding it together. That’s what he’d said. He’d told me to hold it together.
I found myself at Mr. G’s desk holding out my hand for a pass. Not my ghost hand. It was tucked behind my back, my body a solid barrier between it and him. At least, I hoped.
He finished scrawling his messy signature on the little yellow slip but, instead of handing it to me, he looked up. “Passion will be okay,” he said. “We’ll make sure she gets some help.”
“Yeah, I know,” I nodded, staring down at the pass, wondering why he wasn’t giving it to me.
“Gossip could really hurt her though.”
“Mr. G, I won’t say anything.”
“Good,” he said, finally handing the pass to me.
I slipped it into my pocket and moved out into the hallway.
A shadow separated itself from behind the door and Marcus said, “Come on,” taking my arm and steering me down the hall in the wrong direction, away from my Honors English class.
I stumbled along next to him, trying to keep my body between him and my ghost hand, trying to understand where we were going and why we were going there.
We rounded the corner to the Science Wing and he pulled me toward the south exit doors which opened onto a patch of asphalt and the school’s collection of trash dumpsters. It was also the favored place for stoners to smoke during lunch hour.
Just shy of the doors I stopped in my tracks, planting my feet shoulder-width apart like I’d learned in self-defense class.
“Let’s go,” Marcus said, tugging my arm.
“I’m not leaving with you,” I said. “I don’t even know you.”
“What do you mean? I just helped you back there,” he said, letting go of me.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I know you.”
“Fine. I’m Marcus,” he held out his hand.
I didn’t shake it.
“Listen,” he said, obviously frustrated. “You’re in shock and you’re in danger, especially after what you just did. That’s all you really need to know.”
“In danger?” My mind was beginning to clear, but I still had no idea what he was talking about.
“Trust me,” he said, glancing up and down the hall. “We need to get out of here now.” He turned toward the doors again, apparently assuming I’d follow.
“Wait,” I said. This time I was the one grabbing his arm. “My hand—I—just tell me what you did to fix it.”
He stared down at me.
I became aware of the roundness of his bicep through his shirt, of its smooth solidity under my fingers. He was taller than I was, but not by much. My mouth was about even with his chin, and I could feel the warmth of his body radiating toward me, perfumed with his wood-smoked scent. The phrase “smoking hot” flitted through my mind like a moth, and I batted it away. It was very warm in the hallway. Or I was warm. Shit! My ghost hand was warm.
“It’s happening again,” I said, letting go of him and backing away. I couldn’t help looking down at it. It was shimmering around the edges, just like before.
“I can help you,” Marcus said, “if you come with me.”
“Help me now!” I cried. Searing heat blazed up my arm as my fingers stretched away from me, twisting and straining towards him.
“We’ve got to get out of here first,” he insisted. “If they see us together, I’ll never get you out.”
He wasn’t making any sense.
One of my PSS fingers was almost touching him.
He extended his hand toward it, completely unafraid.
Was he crazy? Hadn’t he seen what I’d done to Passion?
I tucked my ghost hand in toward my body, whirled away from him, and ran.
3
RESCUE FROM THE RESTROOM
I charged into the girls’ restroom at the end of the hall, glancing under stall doors and checking for feet. Thankfully, they were all empty, so I chose one with a working latch and locked myself in. I sat down on the toilet seat, trying to catch my breath, and looked down at my hand. It still had tentacles instead of fingers. If anyone saw that, I was screwed.
I dug Mr. G’s pass out of my pocket. As usual, he’d neglected to fill out the time on it, which gave me a few minutes to play with. But if I didn’t show up for English soon, I’d get reported to the office, and my mother would find out. And I could not explain any of this to my mother.
I stuffed the pass back in my pocket and tried not to freak out. Part of me wanted to run. Run and keep running. But another part of me knew that was stupid. I couldn’t run from my own hand. Maybe I should have gone with Marcus. He had made my hand go back to normal, but I was pretty sure of one thing; leaving school with some guy I didn’t know without telling anyone was a very bad idea, no matter what he was promising.
Still, I wasn’t done with Marcus. He had a lot of explaining to do.
First though, I had to make it through the school day without my hand going postal again. And for that I needed help. Help I could trust. I needed Emma.
Emma Campbell had been my best friend since third grade when we’d discovered we both had a crush on Eric Meyers. Emma’s mom, Charlotte Campbell, was Greenfield High’s drama teacher, so Emma always spent last period helping backstage with whatever school play was in the works.
I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans. The battery was low, but I tapped out a text to Emma and pressed send.
Four minutes later, my phone chimed a return message. Good. Emma was already on her way with a hall pass from her mom.
I looked down at my ghost hand. It was still all blurred around the edges, like someone had attacked it with a crimping iron. Why was it doing this to me? An image flashed in my head from some bad horror film—a severed hand with a bloody stump dragging itself down a long hallway by its fingernails. Except this was worse. My evil hand was still attached to me.
The restroom door banged open, and I yanked my legs up, listening while Brittany Randolph and Leah Hodge used the toilets, washed their hands, and shared a quick cigarette and some mindless chatter. They were freshmen, so I didn’t pay much attention to them until they mentioned Passion Wainwright.
“Maybe she’s pregnant,” Leah said, “That can make you faint and sh
it.”
“You actually think the Virgin Mary screwed someone?” Brittany sneered. “Not likely. I don’t think she’s pregnant. I think she’s schizo.”
“Well yeah, but—”
“No, I don’t mean just praise-Jesus crazy. I mean so messed up in the head she needs a shrink. My dad saw her coming out of Dr. Black’s office the other day.”
Dr. Black’s office. The way she said it made my mother’s workplace sound like a crack house. So, Passion had been seeing my mom and, as usual, I was the last to know. Dr. Sophie Black, psychologist extraordinaire, took her doctor/patient confidentiality very seriously. She never told me anything, which was pretty ridiculous in a town so small and nosey you couldn’t take a crap without the neighbors overhearing and asking you how it had all come out. Still, that meant Passion’s parents did know about her cutting and had gotten her some help.
After Brittany and Leah left, I lowered my aching legs, only to hear the door open again. I left my legs where they were and hoped for the best.
“Olivia?”
“Emma, I’m in here.” I wagged my foot under the stall door. My backpack zipper was undone a little, so I slipped my phone into it. Then I opened the door and ushered Emma in. “What took you so long?” I asked. There wasn’t much room. It was a challenge just getting the door closed again.
“I got here as fast as I could,” she said, looking concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“My hand,” I said, holding it out.
“Whoa.” Her eyes grew wide. “What happened to it?”
“It went like this in Calculus, and I couldn’t control it.”
“It went like that and Mr. G didn’t send you home?”
“He didn’t see it,” I explained, “but I can’t go to English like this.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Any ideas?”
“Um, let’s see. How about this?” Emma said. “I’ll go tell Mrs. Baxter my mom wants your help on the production crew like last year. Then we sneak to the auditorium and hide you backstage until school gets out.”
“I think that would work. Oh, Em, thank you,” I said, throwing my arms around her.
“Hey, it’s nothing. You’ve rescued me lots of times,” she mumbled into my shoulder.
I looked down, saw my ghost hand pressed against her back, and pulled away, stumbling against the toilet.
“What?” Emma asked, staring at me.
“I need you to promise me something, okay?” I said, putting my hand behind me. “If my hand starts going weird, you have to get away from me. Don’t stay. Don’t argue. Don’t wait to see what happens. Just run.”
“What in the world happened in Calc? Hey, I heard Passion Wainwright fainted and—Oh my God! Did your hand have something to do with that?”
“Just promise me,” I demanded.
“Fine. I promise. But only if you promise to tell me everything.”
“I’ll tell you,” I said. “Just get me out of English.”
“No problem,” she said, opening the stall door.
I shut and latched it behind her. Then I sat back down, relief washing over me. Emma was an amazing best friend. I didn’t have a clique or a group like most people. I was more of a loner like my dad, who had been a self-proclaimed introvert and artist. Not a wealthy or well-known artist, but a good one with a little studio gallery in our back yard and the occasional big city exhibition. He had actually been one of my best friends and understood me in a way my mother never would. And he had been a buffer between the two of us.
But not anymore.
He’d died of cancer four years ago.
Four years for my relationship with my mom to become what she referred to as “strained”, but that was just psycho-babble for the sad fact that we couldn’t stand each other. Our relationship had never been peachy, but after my dad died, it had gotten much worse.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my mom. But despite the fact that she has a PhD in psychology, she doesn’t understand me at all, and that drives her crazy. And then there’s the issue of my ghost hand. My dad had always been fascinated by it, but my mother has never been able to hide her disappointment. My parents never came right out and told me, but I know the reason I’m an only child is that my mother didn’t want to risk having another baby with PSS.
The restroom door banged opened, and Emma’s voice chimed, “It’s me. Mrs. Baxter was a piece of cake.”
“Thank God.” I pulled my backpack over my shoulder and exited the stall. My hand looked almost back to normal if you didn’t look too closely.
The halls were pretty empty, and Emma and I made it to the auditorium without any trouble. When we got back stage to the prop room, I collapsed into a ratty, overstuffed chair, while Emma rummaged through a giant chest overflowing with bad wigs, weird hats, and feather boas.
“Here,” she said, holding out a long, black, satiny opera glove. “For camouflage, just in case.”
“Thanks.” I took it and slipped it on, flexing my PSS inside the satin, testing its obedience, molding it to the shape of the glove. My hand seemed completely back to normal. Still, I rested it on my knee where I could keep an eye on it. In the new glove, it looked like someone else’s hand, like some villainous overdressed imposter.
“Now,” Emma said, flopping into a beanbag, “tell me everything.”
4
TELLING EMMA
I was just telling Emma how Marcus had stared at my hand and it had gone all warm, when Mrs. Campbell stuck her head in the prop room door.
“Girls,” she said, “I’m desperate for backdrop painters. Come help.”
We couldn’t exactly refuse, since helping her was sort of my whole cover story. Of course, we weren’t the only ones painting, so I couldn’t tell Emma anything then. I thought someone might comment on my opera glove, or Mrs. Campbell might ask me to take it off to paint, but everyone was way too occupied speculating about Passion Wainwright to notice anything else. The paint crew had all kinds of theories about why she had fainted. She was pregnant or mentally ill (Thanks Leah and Brittany). She was anemic. She was a vampire. Her dad sexually abused her. She was a lesbian. She was sleeping with Mr. G. (not sure why any of those last four would make someone faint). And the final theory of the day, she was a cutter. I knew Mr. G would blame me for that one, even though I hadn’t told a soul. Maybe when he heard he was sleeping with her, he’d understand the true irrepressible nature of the high school rumor mill and cut me some slack.
Anyway, Mrs. Campbell finally figured out what everyone was talking about and put a stop to it.
Usually, I was a pretty good painter. I got that from my dad. But when the final bell rang and Mrs. Campbell came over to take a look at what I’d done, she stared at it in surprise and said, “Olivia, are you all right?”
No, I was not all right. I couldn’t stop worrying about Passion. I was terrified my hand was going to impale someone else. I was paranoid about getting caught at school with a backpack full of razor blades. And now I sucked at painting. But I couldn’t tell Emma’s mom any of that, so I just said, “I’m a little tired.”
The rest of the paint crew left to go home, but Emma’s mom was our ride, so the three of us stayed and finished repainting my lame backdrop together.
After that, Mrs. Campbell locked up the auditorium, we piled in her mini-van, and she dropped me and Emma off at their place on her way to pick up Mr. Campbell from work. It was their monthly date night, and I always slept over at Emma’s on date night. Finally, Emma and I would be totally alone. Even Grant, Emma’s older brother, wouldn’t be home. He’d recently left to start his freshman year at Indianapolis University.
Emma opened the back door, tossed her backpack on a kitchen chair, and crossed to the fridge. “Let’s get you some food. You’re looking kind of pale. And then you can tell me what happened in Calc.”
I closed the Campbells’ back door and started to toss my backpack too, but then I remembered the blades. I needed to get rid of th
em, but I couldn’t just throw them in Emma’s kitchen trash. Someone might see them. I needed someplace no one would find them; maybe I could bury them or something.
“Coke and Cheetos, or Fanta and Funyuns?” Emma asked, her head in the fridge.
“Fanta and Funyuns? That’s disgusting.” My stomach roiled at the thought. I sat down at the Campbells’ kitchen table and set my backpack at my feet.
“Coke and Cheetos it is then,” she said, emerging from fridge with two Cokes clutched in one hand. She snagged a large bag of Cheetos out of the cupboard with the other, kicked the fridge door closed, and sat down next to me. “You okay?” she asked handing me a soda.
“Not really,” I said. This was our Friday ritual. Emma’s house. Plenty of junk food. Talking about anything and everything that crossed our minds. And it always made me feel better, no matter how bad the week had been, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to help this time. If I had been in shock, like Marcus had said, it was wearing off and whatever came after it felt an awful lot like needing to cry and hyperventilate at the same time.
“So tell me,” Emma said gently, just as a muffled ringing rose from my bag.
We both stared down at it.
“Your phone,” Emma said, looking at me expectantly.
It rang again, but I didn’t move. What had I been thinking when I’d put my phone in with the blades? That was just the problem; I hadn’t been thinking.
The phone rang a third time, insistent, unrelenting.
“Are you going to answer it?” Emma asked.
I reached down and unzipped the bag a little.
Thankfully, my phone was resting on top of the blades, so I pulled it out quickly and answered, “Hello?”
“Where are you?” snapped my mother. “I expected you home half an hour ago.”
“What? Why? I’m at Emma’s. You know I always spend the night at Emma’s on the Campbells’ date night.”
“Yes, I do,” she said, “which is why I reminded you three times this morning that I needed you home by four tonight.”
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